The Body/ Mind/ Spirit Workshops, which Harold Sherman's ESP Research Associates Foundation, Little Rock, Arkansas, sponsored annually for years, have brought together laymen, scientists and psychics of the U.S. for very worthwhile exchanges of ideas and experiences. It was at the 1976 Workshop in St. Louis where we met Alan Neuman of Alan Neuman Productions, Inc., who had been producing and directing television programs and films, many of which had received honors and awards, including the Wide, Wide World series, Meet the Press, and many others.

Neuman was looking for psychic phenomena and psychic talent which could be dramatically and accurately portrayed for a long documentary film he had in mind and after reading our recently published book, New Psychic Frontiers, he concluded that because of our contacts with psychics and investigators in the U.S. and other countries, we could be of assistance. He came to spend part of several days at our home at Oregon, Wisconsin discussing his plans. His philosophy and approach were compatible with our own. In the resume he presented to us, he said:

Neuman intended no staged or studio production - "everything that takes place will be ... real people taking part in real events.'' We were in complete agreement with the objectives of this project. Walter left on September 16th for three weeks in the Philippines and Japan to assist in the search for phenomena which could be effectively portrayed on film.

This was Walter's first experience with a professional film crew and he learned a lot about the logistics, mechanics and the human elements involved in producing the filmed segments which were to become part of a larger program. Since he had been asked to "Identify talent" and also serve as an "advance man" for the film crew, lining up events one or two days in advance of their arrival, he got to see events from a different perspective than those who were behind the cameras. He left the Philippines for Tokyo two days ahead of the crew. There he went to Dr. Motoyama's Institute for Religion and Parapsychology, the best contact he had in Japan, to get suggestions for what might be worth filming. In his notebook he had made the following notes for himself:

What in Japan? If possible -

5. Arrange to have local equipment in reserve for Tuesday shooting - possibly Tuesday to Thursday, if warranted.

When Alan Neuman, Bob Collins, and Pamela de Maigret reached Tokyo, it was agreed that it would be difficult to visually portray the research work at Dr. Motoyama's laboratory in a five-minute segment in a meaningful way. Yukio Ishii, whose thoughtography had appeared in the German publication Esotera (two of his pictures were in our book), was no longer available to the media. His parents had decided that the pressures on this sensitive youth were too great for him to endure more publicity. Because of Gerard Croiset's international reputation for psychically locating lost and missing persons, a Japanese television station had flown him from Holland that May 1976 to see if he could help locate a seven-year-old girl who had been sought for four days by 750 police. This looked like an interesting event to film so Walter went to the Japan Times for an English version of the story.

It would have been very difficult to reconstruct all the details of that tragic event and luck was with us when we learned about Masuaki Kiyota. He was one of the "Geller children" whose psychic abilities had become known after Geller appeared on TV in Japan.

Rande Brown, a young American working with Dr. Motoyama, introduced Walter to Toshiaki Harada, Ph.D., a physicist on Dr. Motoyama's staff, who as a student at the University of Hawaii had acquired proficiency in English. [Neuman, Collins and de Maigret had arrived on the weekend and we needed an interpreter when Dr. Harada was not available. Fortunately Walter remembered that when he was on the University of Minnesota faculty, Mr. Matsumi Muramatsu who was then a representative of a Japan-U.S. trade commission in Washington, D.C. had spoken at a conference at the University. He had since returned to Tokyo and now headed SIMUL, a large translation agency for business and government visitors. A phone call to Mrs. Muramatsu was a "life-saver"; she was able to help us with arranging to have a local camera crew ready for filming. In March 1979 we again saw Mr. Muramatsu in Tokyo. He had recently written a best-selling book, I Couldn't Speak English Either, recounting some of his humorous experiences as an interpreter.] He offered to serve as interpreter and took Walter to meet Dr. Tsutomu Miyauchi, managing director of the Japan Nengraphy Association. Miyauchi immediately thought that Masuaki Kiyota, with whom he had been working, would be a good subject for the film project and he phoned Mr. Kiyota. School children in Japan who hope to go to college are under severe academic pressures and it took some persuasion on Dr. Miyauchi's part to arrange a meeting at the Kiyota home.

The reports about what Masuaki could do in metal bending and thoughtography sounded so interesting that it was hoped he would prove to be a good subject for the film. Dr. Miyauchi and Dr. Harada accompanied the film crew to the home in the Senju district in Tokyo. Our group had brought along a Polaroid camera and film. Walter stopped at a hardware store en route to buy three heavy tablespoons of stainless steel and two teaspoons for an initial experiment.

Masuaki, then 14 years old, was handed one of the newly-purchased tablespoons. He took it, stroked the handle lightly with his fingers, then made a quick clockwise motion with his wrist and tossed the spoon in the air. When it landed on the floor it had a pronounced twist in the handle of about 180 degrees and the bowl of the spoon "drooped." (See illustration below for a top and side view of the handle.) Masuaki twisted a number of spoons for other members of the film crew before they moved upstairs for an experiment in thoughtography. Alan Neuman let Walter keep the first spoon as evidence and souvenir. Two days later Masuaki twisted another spoon for Walter, and on the evening before the crew's departure, Walter tried his best to communicate to Masuaki that he would like an unbent spoon to take along home for tests. Masuaki got another spoon and while he walked toward Walter, gave his wrist a quick twist and produced a third bent spoon instead.

Dr. Miyauchi had brought along a chart recorder to monitor this experiment with a Silicon Photo Diode. Masuaki asked what hotel we were staying at, and after we told him "The Keio Plaza" he concentrated on the camera for a minute or so, emitted a loud cry that conveyed exertion and excitement, and when the film was peeled from the negative, there was the Keio Plaza hotel, clearly recognizable and produced from an aerial perspective which would normally have required a helicopter to achieve. Yet it was evening in the Kiyota home, about ten miles from the Keio Plaza. (See page 147.)

Masuaki wanted to try again and he produced the top half of the hotel with the air conditioning units visible on the roof and the lower structures surrounding the hotel appearing from an aerial perspective.

Dr. Miyauchi had conducted many experiments with Masuaki prior to our visit; this was not a new experience for him, startling as it was for us. He tore the paper from the pen-recorder he had been using and gave it to Walter as "evidence."

At the next filming session, with the movie cameras set up and running, Masuaki produced images of the Tokyo Tower. This was the film segment incorporated in the 90-minute program, "Exploring the Unknown" shown by NBC-TV, October 30, 1977. The commentary narrated by Burt Lancaster described the experiment as follows:

We are concerned with the extension of the human potential: of broadening the areas of human creativity into dimensions that hitherto have been relatively unexplored.

Any photography expert will tell you that there are a lot of things which can affect photographic film. Light exposes film of course, but heat, pressure, chemicals and various types of radiation, like x-rays will also mark films.

Many of us who have been around film labs have heard stories about people who seem to fog film just by being near it. Apparently they emit some sort of unknown radiation which ruins the film. Instead of being studied scientifically, they usually get fired.

That situation is different with a Japanese boy who seems to have some control over this energy. He seems to direct it, and what is more astounding, he appears to create pictures with it.

With him is Professor Miyauchi, a physicist, and Mr. Fukuda a photographic expert. They believe that Masuaki is creating light energy and he can somehow project it into a sealed black metal box.

Professor Miyauchi built equipment to test this idea. The light-tight metal box has nine photoelectric cells mounted on the inside top surface. A film pack can be inserted into the box, then each film can be pulled out individually and it automatically develops immediately.

The first film in the pack is always used as a control to make sure that the box is properly closed and that no light is getting in around the edges.

Masuaki says that he needs to be able to visualise the image. Then he concentrates on the box and lets his energy, or tension build up. When he feels ready, he lets go of the energy suddenly by saying the Japanese equivalent of "POW."

Each of the light sensitive photoelectric cells inside the box is attached by an electric wire to one pen on this nine channel chart recorder. As soon as Masuaki creates light inside the box, the pens on the chart recorder show the position and duration of the light strike. This is verified again when the film is pulled out and developed.

Masuaki can usually make streaks and even patterns on the film. At the beginning of the experiment he was asked to place a light-strike on the lower left hand side of the picture. . . and he did it.

This was our camera, and this was our film. And we brought it here for the first time and you are seeing me insert it. Now I am pulling the tab and I am handing it to the boy. The lens is capped.

(Japanese dialogue)

Tokyo Tower. All right, let 's see what we have here. In thirty seconds we should know. I kinda helped on that one...

You are looking at the Tokyo Tower. It is a landmark. It was the Tokyo Tower that Masuaki projected for us. We thought you would like to see the real thing and compare.

When we look at a photograph, we take for granted the process that placed the picture upon the paper ... the subject being photographed, the snap of a shutter that allows the lens to project an image upon the negative from which the print is made.

Now ponder: creating such a picture without a camera at all, using neither shutter nor lens nor negative as Masuaki has done here in this picture of the Tokyo Tower.

Masuaki claims to be able to place an image upon film simply by creating the same image in his mind - projecting what amounts to a figment of his imagination on onto the tangible reality of a photograph.

Think further ... if the mind can do this, what more can it do?

We continue to meet persons from time to time who saw the 1977 NBC-TV program and virtually all of them remember the segment in which Masuaki projected the Tokyo Tower onto Polaroid film. Since this first appearance on film, he has received invitations from television companies in Australia and England; and in July 1979, along with Hiroto Yamashita, was the subject of two half-hour documentary programs on Nippon TV Network.

CU Black Box

Two Professors and Masuaki Loading Equipment and Showing Inside of Box

CU Masuaki Watching Two Professors Finish Loading Film, Pull Out Tape, Pull Out Control Film, Hand Box to Masuaki

Masuaki Holds Box, Concentrates and Suddenly Gestures

Two Professors and Masuaki with Read Out Chart and Control Picture

CU Two Professors and Equipment

CU Two Professors and Masuaki Profs. Open Up Picture and Masuaki Reaches For It

Close Up on Picture

Alan Neuman and Masuaki Seated Together

Masuaki Answers Alan Neuman Watches as Masuaki Concentrates on Putting Image on Film with His Mind. They Wait for the Film to Develop. A.N. Strips Off Backing to Show Print of Tokyo Tower

Anyone - no matter how open-minded - who explores or experiences paranormal events, is likely at some time or other to encounter phenomena which tax his or her capacity to accept their reality. With Elaine Morikawa as our interpreter, we had a conversation with Yoshinori Kiyota, Masuaki's father, about an experience with his son which had shaken him.

This occurred when Masuaki was about twelve. He had been teasing his young sister Yukizi unmercifully, until his father threatened to punish him if he persisted. Like many a twelve-year-old, Masuaki continued his teasing and Kiyota proceeded to carry out his threat to spank him. Masuaki ran out of the restaurant into what is a narrow dead-end alley. As his father reached out to grab him, the boy disappeared into "thin air." His horrified parent yelled, "Come back here!" and a terrified Masuaki literally plopped down in front of his father. By this time, as one would expect, his intention to punish the boy had vanished.

The first, or perhaps even the tenth time, something so unbelievable occurs, it can be dismissed, but eventually self-honesty and integrity forces one to evaluate the evidence. Had we not read Uri Geller's autobiography [Geller, Uri, My Story. Praeger Publishers, New York, 1975. pp. 210-18.] before hearing about Masuaki's "dematerialization," we would have had even greater difficulty comprehending the validity of the Kiyotas' experience.

In his autobiography, Geller tells how he had been jogging near First Avenue in New York City about 6 p.m. on November 9, 1973 and what seemed an instant later, crashing through the screened porch of Dr. Andrija Puharich's house at Ossining, New York, about 30 miles away. Mystified and stunned, Uri was relieved to find that he had only a sore knee and no broken bones. He had great difficulty comprehending what had happened, but there were enough persons in New York City who had been with him at 5:30 p.m. so that there was no way that his precipitous arrival in Ossining could be explained by any known mode of travel.

We had another "mind-boggling" experience with teleportation which we think was connected with our visit to Japan. When we were preparing to leave Manila, where we had spent nearly two weeks after leaving Tokyo, the telephoto lens for Walter's 35 mm. Canon camera could not be found. We laid out every item we had with us, emptied the suitcases and brief cases, before leaving for Colombo in Sri Lanka. We concluded that it had been stolen and reported the loss to our insurance agent in Oregon, Wisconsin, upon our arrival in Colombo.

A week later, after our flight to Zurich, we drove as far as a small town near Freiburg, Germany, where we again checked through our luggage. There, on top of everything else in the carrying case was the telephoto lens! Even now we have difficulty believing what we experienced ourselves. We can appreciate how difficult it is for others to comprehend second-hand reports of unusual, "far-out" experiences.

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